News Henderson Island

A ground-breaking $2.3million RSPB (BirdLife in the UK) project to eliminate introduced rats from an uninhabited island in the central Pacific has attempted to remove the fingerprints of man from an otherwise idyllic tropical paradise.

Henderson, one of the Pitcairn Islands, is home to Endangered Henderson Petrel and many of the world’s gadfly petrels. Together with its endemic plants, snails and invertebrates, not to mention its turtle population, it must surely be as important as Britain & Ireland in terms of global biodiversity. Yet conservation bodies are desperately trying to raise funds to eradicate the Polynesian Rats that could seriously affect much of the island’s unique wildlife, and potentially cause species extinctions...

Put together, the UK’s 16 overseas territories are fifth in the world league table of bird extinctions, with at least ten species from the territories going to oblivion since 1500AD, partially or wholly because of the impact of non-native mammals, such as rats, feral cats, mice and pigs.